“Despite the absence of objective standards, scientific validation, and adequate statistical studies, a natural question to ask is how well fingerprint examiners actually perform. Proficiency tests do not validate a procedure per se, but they can provide some insight into error rates. In 1995, the Collaborative Testing Service (CTS) administered a proficiency test that, for the first time, was “designed, assembled, and reviewed” by the International Association for Identification (IAI).The results were disappointing. Four suspect cards with prints of all ten fingers were provided together with seven latents. Of 156 people taking the test, only 68 (44%) correctly classified all seven latents. Overall, the tests contained a total of 48 incorrect identifications. David Grieve, the editor of the Journal of Forensic Identification, describes the reaction of the forensic community to the results of the CTS test as ranging from “shock to disbelief,”..

Not so good, eh? Get yourself a mediocre fingerprint technician and who KNOWS what fate has in store. (Latents, by the way, are prints that don’t show up till you “dust em”).

EAR IDENTIFICATION (SERIOUSLY)

Maybe there’s a better way.

Dr. Mark Nixon (and others) at the University of Southampton say that the little swirly thing in the ear, the helix, is durn good for telling us apart with close to 100% accuracy. That’s what we’re looking for, right? 99+ %? Will “earprints” replace fingerprints at Scotland Yard?

Not likely, according to A Wild at the University of Rhode Island (That’s as much identification as your gonna get; he’s one of Mister ScienceAintSoBad’s best kept secrets). Wild reminds us that accuracy isn’t enough. Criminal types, he says, would have to start scattering photos of their own ears around crime scenes or, perhaps, begin pressing the sides of their heads against corpses, for ear detection to have any forensic value. Whereas it is hard to avoid leaving fingerprints and DNA behind, your average perpetrator can probably figure out how to keep his ears off the walls.

OTHER APPLICATIONS

To be fair, Dr. Nixon and his colleagues probably had different applications in mind for the ear identification technique such as biometric screening. For that purpose, with further development, it may well turn out to be useful.